"through our own damned trumpets, through our damned medium:"

          tourniquetsonnets are sonnets i started to write after the printing/publication of my book "Self-Portrait of the Poet Suicided by the MFA Degree." it was a nice way to unshoulder, unholster?, the fragments i cdn't/can't stitch into whatever i call a poem. they're deconstructed documentaries from a dragnet. here're two...


tourniquetsonnet upon the realization of a book


a stork’s heart is a right turn at a red light, natch?
21 minutes of recon in the forest of derailed trains
Anastasia loudly weeps tawdry Las Vegas crooner

…no way my lips are hacked off, Joseph; after all
Dutch East India Trading—  porn in the USA; to wit
a stack of LIFE magazines trapped in flat of angles;

aye, spent some of the war in a hospital at Nantes
before the nurse sutured my latent feelings, quite
it’s the essence of the idea that doesn’t really matter

the expression of vulnerability—it was vociferous!!!
storm stutter—38 apathy stab me w/ a butcher knife
Pantone 18-1663 TPX dismissed from one’s pulse

einstürzende! einstürzende! einstürzende! einstür…
zen is the Whalen in yr heartbeat (plz. come back)


—


tourniquetsonnet for the orison of a parachute,


certainly life erupts anchors aweigh w/ gravity
piano plink rain i sd Georgia i can’t stop drinking
tourniquets and Maria Callas records you were
cursive writing on a former trunk line, eastbound

it’s not a question of whether who we once were

my grandfather’s wars twinge and i see a violin
pique from the bourbon as i curate a car crash
departures blur through the old country of youth
whilst miniature carnations sprout from my aorta

restless rural romanticism, maritime americana

two rowboats tread water reifying insouciance
chance and design, from illogical angles, quietly
the radiator pipes of my rib cage rattle as i hum
self-portrait of the portrait suicided by justin, etc.









–post quote from J. Spicer's Imaginary Elegies I

modern melancholy, etc.

            elegantly taking one’s clothes off before a sensuous woman

            unabashedly, flamboyantly beautiful •• more elusive, historically •• it’s that faded sense of beauty you long for and forever hold onto when you behold it •• liable to be derailed at any moment and required for a debriefing •• after every fleeting, triumphant moment…stricken— •• opera gloves; a red gown, snarling as you pass, nowhere else so erotic •• scrawled prayers on the back of holy pictures •• these harrows are daydreams rended by indiscreet drama and inapposite passion… •• you suspect “no girl was ever seduced by a book;” •• the torrid narcosis that filters through the candlelight, the East Berlin amphetamines •• a searching fire, subsiding from a rosary, under chemical light •• the gears of an Antebellum pocket watch, in which you begin to interrogate clarity •• the velocity of a departing angel through the vor of autumn leaves •• incongruous is the horizon •• the hallucinatory hymn of her portrait •• “romance is a mournful beauty,” she’ll say, confuting the cute squalor of yr nostalgia •• as you taxi to threnody the treble in her throat •• it’s the most dangerous of moods: a desire for complete isolation of an all-consuming romance •• the ghostfights and other nude scenes •• exotic mirrors late in the tension of acquiescence toward the threshold of the absurd •• the elusive cartography: a stethoscope to the chest •• tonight brings what is left of auscultation •• melancholy may long for a samurai who gives everything up for the love of a geisha •• red carnations and the glamour of being a shadow •• a mannequin wearing an ornate wedding dress w/ an antique birdcage for a head •• Billie Holiday singing along to a Remington 5 typewriter •• an Astra Constable tucked into a folded New York Times •• it’s a rainy Tuesday morning •• remodeling interior gods in a Gledhill Halifax cash register •• which is to say, if the rumors were true •• speakeasy brass bands from inside a velvet chesterfield •• that just documents the diamond heist behind her eyes

unsculpted, intrinsic

Susie Q’s vibrator, pts. 1 & 2


Cliff Notes and chartreuse
sullen notes on a 1914 Steinway Grand
nude, framed
in stolen fabric and/or Fear 
playing SNL ’81
forever in debt to divergent motifs
“i’m Peter Pan!,” or “eat my fuck” 
blithe regret, nostalgia
nihilistically disillusioned 
in my early-middle age
of assignations and whimsy
temporary residence in another fairytale
of ennui and of old lovers
abstraction, and psychological insight
adult truths
beneath my bespoke skeleton


“in order to understand, i destroyed myself” 
to trombone and drums 
a few prayers 
rattled off on an old macchina da scrivere
laconic, insular
on the sleazier side of Sunday
reversing into the subsequent
it’s possible it’s too late to attempt 
to make any sense
every opportunity shrugs off sincerity
the tenebrism of the implication
weary, woebegone
six schooners of King’s Ransom
i took a floret and transfixed it through 
the forearms of my Lord
facing myself as the light adjourned

"Poetry is a form of desire devoted to the impossibility of its own fulfillment." -- D. Beachy-Quick

three.new.poems


01 /

owl always love her

white lilac trees and champagne balconies •• a grey rain takes reign •• it cd be we’re so elegant, dressed as we were, in our rags of hymns and ghosts •• b/c where you go, i go too •• i am probably in Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland •• then i am in the drawing room of an old New England house across from Wesleyan •• listening to a young spinster play piano •• watching square-peg girls in love w/ their best friends’ boyfriends playing effeuiller la marguerite •• part flamenco, part ineffable •• [stark staring, i love her] •• nevertheless, i am reading a textbook on how to design airports, or an insulation manual for post-war tract housing •• nevertheless, i am drawn into another languorous world, and the wasted time waltzes back, sometimes •• these crippled symmetries •• i put my ear to her chest and listen •• [but where did she come from?] •• smoke off crumpled paper in the ashtray next to a dining room table littered w/ guns and bespoke balloons •• materializing light •• a Rotring Xonox Graphic as it depicts “owl always love her” in a tattered Leuchtturm 1917 •• i came to see everything as a willow of white phosphorus at the end of the red carpet •• a bolero or a French film acting out the cognitive dissonance of trying to dwell in a handful of worlds concurrently •• a funeral parade of roses •• like a man praising a woman’s beauty to her •• classically brilliant and erotic •• a sparse landscape w/ bird skeletons as resonance for inner emotions •• [Between 2 Battles, The Warrior Has A Well-Deserved Rest At The Soft Breast Of His Beloved Lady And Dreams Of Other Despairs And Victories] •• somewhere in between bleeding broadcasts of the evening news and the nightly Top 20 •• there is a mild sadness that permeates everything •• i put my ear to the ceiling and wait for the transmission’s tenebrism •• it’s enough to give a lapsed Catholic nightmares •• then i am in the attic, reading •• “when i thought abt it, it seemed to me that the human heart was a very primitive instrument” •• i remember there was the time someone installed a transistor radio in their heart and the chambers filled w/ blood •• coming back from the country after taking the cure

02 /

the high sadness condition evoked less arousal than the low sadness condition


a vice-versa'd golf umbrella
all skeleton, Maybelline eyeliner-black
placid beauty
an orchid, or a tumor, or i forgot;
a sad expression
surprisingly suffused w/ colour—
the wilderness of our time has been exorcized
white moth whiskey; 5 o'clock cocktails
i come to you, as always:
ballerinas creaky on wooden floors...
nude, repairing a revolver;
sledgehammer symbolism, sure
the heart is just 
a series of on-ramps
chasing sunsets to forever elude the sunrise—
yet, to find oneself unable,
low-voltage, too, a quiet hum...
i immediately fell in love 
w/ that picture;
my heart is ramshackle, he sd, rural
stapled w/ swill
just as inextricably stitched up 
w/ a crooked cobweb, an American Dream
abscessed w/ guilt…
not glamourous or stark, it has to be 
love at first sight:
sheared w/ arrhythmia & bramble
i had it framed
drinking aftershave from the bottom half 
of a matryoshka doll—

03 / 

to refurbish a skeleton's ribcage into a stereo cabinet

                                                               for Justin Jones

imagine roaring lions, drugstore kites, and Carry On Wayward Son

telephone booths, Old Master oil colours, up escalators

a sword fight w/ outboard motors

imagine sharing a 2009 Black Label Claret w/ a street arab

[as i've been damned more than once…]

or anxiolytics, Mt. St. Helens, bright orange Bantam paperbacks

classified black ops files

a Westinghouse Mosin-Nagant M1891 → Kill The Moonlight

[as his heart is decidedly in the right place]

imagine argyle-sweater sadness, a prie-dieu

the iconic door of 10 Downing Street

perhaps then we’d have the first intimation of Our Lady of the Flowers

[as such, the tragedy]

rooster-tail bass flute, Fentanyl, stillness and nostalgia

the Meth of a Rockette’s Kick

imagine J.C. Leyendecker’s “Couple Descending a Staircase”

an Oldfield’s Rarebit yearbook c. 1914

[as it’s everything i’ve decided in a moment of passion & interest]

red light districts, or Hollywood Babylon

Mary Miles Minter, thin Martinis, and Armchair No. F 51 by Walter Gropius

imagine E. Manteca on a Wednesday night in January

an overturned Ferris wheel

a pawn shop, porn mags and jazz records

or insert Justin Jones’ favourite bombastic 70s rock song here

[as i’ve begun to look out the window onto E. 17th Street]

benign, damaged beauty

perhaps then we’d know what it is to stand in awe of the post-whatever malaise

a weathervane, aesthetic wilderness

ylang-ylang, mercury thermometers, or Iowa as a verb

[as i’ve Iowa’d the fuck out this poem]

spellbound, shadow boxed in kissy-face, of art and erotica

a watercolour from the bombshell’s wee small hours

or a gentleman in lust whispering, “aw-shucks”

[as i've considered lechery]

Boris Yeltsin, a Rieger Orgelbau pipe organ, and vintage telenovelas

one’s heart in a bulldog edition

a New York Times A1 story

a photo in which she meets the murderer in an art gallery wearing a low-cut dress

remember, the guns and lovers came after

plastic explosives, periscopes, geraniums, and Mexican summers

[as it’s like when a young boy falls in love & steals a photo of his crush]

or “though pink elephants i wd see”

a E.R. Squibb & Sons Morphine Syrette, as all it took was one look

a silhouette of profound upheavals

a backlit Cibachrome photo

[as “i freebase the carousel in my sleep, no less”]

ticking off marauders, Tetragrammaton, and outdated Yellow Pages

poem for a nurse smoking a cigarette against a police telephone box on 8th Street 


maybe memory, in the thin, soft blue light of a medevac helicopter
time was hidden, hemmed in red, evenings at 1950s jazz clubs 
        & '20s debutante balls and such;
i am suspended under the barometer of an incense-stained crucifix―

the mood of the dry martini at the precipice of one's heart: 
        portraits of lust and false-heartedness
in these elegiac Happy Days suburbs, words pinned like butterflies 
        in a museum case...
her heart to sorrow; one is left wondering if the girl actually 
        exists or if―

as if i were a kite, words failed, dragging a dead deer down 
        a diary's spinal column...
yesterday's wake of ramshackle boat sheds, of heron-haunted estuaries
and its mise-en-scène; that is, say "i love you" again, 
        loudly enough this time―

tonight, Old Farm Pure Rye Whiskey w/ a well-water back, the last 
        summer rainstorm before shanghai...
transistor-amp guitars & rickety piano squalling out a steeplechase;
it's a beautifully horrible resolve; a kiss frustrated 
        from a Mills & Boon mass market paperback


if it's morning now, 7 o'clock, stethoscopes & tourniquets; 
        uninstalling IEDs from a chest cavity
white knuckled & stationery-deaf from a Gustav Mahler symphony

endless early-70s FM calibration in contrast to modern erotica
lampshaded at the thresholds of verschärfte Vernehmung, 
        breath hushed like a dead chandelier

from 434 E 17th Street out

a mini book

*

title:

from 434 E 17th Street out

- - -

subtitle:

thereupon comes apologies or sorrows

- - -

preface:

curious ennui, gestural vertigo

however an eulogy of tequila & quarantine

aspectabund

on the other hand, discriminative affections

of madonnas & bijoux

Koré in heaven, Justin in solitary squall

- - - 

in any event, belle tournure, not something always already constructed

this tension between being here, becoming there

- - -

i told Milo his meows reminded me of a meadowlark

coughing up blood in the dark…

- - -

this is a chance meeting

of a typewriter

& an umbrella on a rocking chair

in a brandy snifter

Bob Fosse dancing on the blade of an ice skate

in a raindrop

- - -

the scrawl of my grrl sprawled in bed

- - -

if every mother's son is romantic

then i awake to Mary Magdelene moaning mourning birds

- - -

perhaps

the lurid claims of the marvelous

shipwreck 

& the intangible

buoyancy 

& the intangible

will someone plz. tell me 

what i have sd

- - -

the ethical ambiguity of this terrific "imagination"

- - -

while folding fitted sheets

listening to Laura Smith sing "I'm Gonna Kill Myself"

i wonder which is worse:

the lonesome church bells or the lonely train whistle

- - -

my happiness is a raindrop in wool mittens; naked lovers 

forgetting narcissism in the epiphany of eroticism

- - -

commentary:

similarly, the erotics of such nevertheless isolation

so one arrives, finally, at pleasure

- - -

when my baby's beside me i know

i know i won't be lonely one more day

- - -

in the span of so-many books 

i have invented a fire extinguisher: a memory of autobiography 

scuffed like graphite on tracing paper

the depth of narrative eschews the carburetor

a comfortable solution, 

the repossession of the exterior by the interior

, unacknowledged

- - -

exposition:

brown plaid flannel

pink suede shoes

- - -

my breath bled a bottle of Bordeaux; my shadow 

slipped into the asylum of a scarlet begonia…

- - -

jazz, eventually

the imprimatur of a geisha in a dollhouse

razor-fan torch ballad

either way, the rip cord, frayed

- - -

Norma Fraser sais

the first cut is the deepest

Fern Kinney sais

together we are beautiful

Imogen Heap sais

goodnight and go

it was raining

& i wielded my tongue of scotch

like a hypodermic needle

- - -

weltanschauung, of sorts:

i had a dream D Suar & i sang

Charles Aznavour's "Je Bois"

a heart imbued w/ sudden nostalgia

we turned our ghosts loose amidst the gravitational pull

of our respective sirens

it's true everything abounds

it's just beware 

the hidden razors in the rendezvous

of one's self

- - -

if access to one's past is through a surreal sentence (def. 4b)

then this thought is a still life of an ironing board

clearly, you are better off if you know the extent of yr injuries or damages

yet, can one extend this consideration

- - -

non-referential:

ha ha ha

fuck if i'd know

- - -

i shadow box the museum butterflies on the wall

a whale in my heart can't prove this

sometimes i think Full Metal Jacket

in a decompression chamber

and i thought i moved on from ribbons & custom boxes:

last night or selected poems of Paul Carroll

perhaps i translated doubt wrong;

there was still this tremour in the holy

- - -

proclamation:

AWAKE AND BE FINE, YOU FUCKER

- - -

vociferously, this fever is an atelier of ferns

a cylinder of contemplation;

Nosferatu & Lolita debating an evening 

of existentialism

- - -

a pang is just distortion exiting the heart

- - -

i may be right, i may be wrong

Dorothy sd something like "beautiful goddamn friend"

an egret shuttered like a photograph out of water

how succinct the bright streams

the comfort we feel as we bayonet 

out of the barricades of our fugue

- - -

the protocols of a sad song

an accidental translation of this evening's acroamatic asymmetry

an eyelash against a breast

to borrow another memory of yesterday's effectiveness

- - -

i'll see there is no ikon

there is no plausibility

in hindsight, i guess

one finds their archangel

- - -

commentary:

i am not above the mitigating descent, yet

let my atonement be displaced in ascent

- - -

in January and difficult, surreal images

watching patron saints take quiet pages

tonight, i'd say fuck you like a grace note

watching the first quarter moon garrote 

the pinned butterflies on the microscope slide of blank paper

in the rubberneck of the typewriter's absurd candor

- - -

i bleach the scalpel 

in a vial of perfume

- - -

searching for a signature

homily, etc.

the transcendent signified

in a flat of angles

a careful consideration

of my place

a reflection of this 

particular intersection

- - -

exposition:

sunbeam through rainy leaves

this afternoon

a hurricane lamp against the imperative 

wounds

"Fuck I want to be bound by devotion!        Tortured

by passion!"

- - -

whether the implication can be drawn that

Vicodin & viognier

can hush the blood of this cold

from being a mere reduction of Thanksgiving's 

simple absurdités 

belies the psychological possibilities...

a hedgehog in tap shoes

w/in the formal elements

of a red heart in a church

- - -

more important

than the replacement of anxiety w/ whisky

is the redevelopment

of our belle tournure

Ceravoloing through our love affair

- - -

proclamation:

i will never undress like an adieu

b/c i can't help falling in love w/ you

- - -

imagery conflates eyesight w/ a pair of binoculars

this is true, w/ a subtle, particular tenor

- - -

wearing cartography on one's heart-sleeves: 

Arkansas makes me want to hold you

to the microscope of my heart

curating the calculus of distance

like a star-strewn rampart

- - -

once i started walking

through the synchronized swimming of her love

it came to caterwauling chemistry

how do two tableau through the spiral stairs

drowning in the eddy of heartbeats

- - -

Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Merz

- - -

pretty little angel eyes

you're astride something

- - -

i walk through these empty pages

and strewn among the company of hope

i find you

naked, i guess, uninterpretable

as we contour into our own map

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 11

            candle wax on the green grass

                        or

            the periodic multiplication table of elements

                                                “The wires in the rose are beautiful.”

                                                “Imagine this as lyric poetry.”

           hurry up, we are, perhaps, dreaming •• of Central Valley countryside or downtown Oakland, Ca. basement apartments •• Deutsche Grammophon conductors •• interpreting “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” in thrall, imaginably •• to Looney Tunes femmes fatales— •• no, that’s probably a faulty emotion •• we most likely need San Francisco city council meetings •• as seen fuzzily •• through a pair of 1950s Rembrandt VHF/UHF bunny ears •• or snow falling on weeping willows— •• the slender legs of Tina Turner dancing the Varen’ka •• O, how we become startled •• to find ourselves in our own personal snug harbour of such renowned, ridiculous reverie •• correspondingly, i put a songbird •• in my throat to wreak havoc w/ the voice-recognition software— •• this is crucial •• b/c it is there we introduced the lyrical “i” •• as in: I SHOCK MYSELF •• taking a Stihl FS45 weed trimmer to a bed of geraniums— •• yet, i never thought this day wd come •• reading Blaise Cendrars on the Trans-Siberian Express toward Vladivostok •• or, chasing a ground squirrel across a golf course in an April rainstorm— •• “O, where will you find me now?” •• my lover whispers •• of something collapsing & being built simultaneously •• as she pulls a Tijuana Bible •• from her Frederick Mellinger of Hollywood Marabou Peignoir— •• the catalog says it’s 1964 •• so i name a blue heron Deep Throat •• & rent “All the President’s Men” from the old Video Station on Wilshire Boulevard— •• the palm trees erupt, O what a tremendous time we’re having: •• Emily Dickinson analyzing Donald Barthelme short stories •• Charlotte Rampling reading Dick Tracy comics from the 40s •• on a St. James Chaise from J. Robert Scott— •• but the typewriter ODs •• as i shove the aforesaid flower wreckage into a 1929 Pierce-Arrow radiator •• thinking of ekstasis & the angriest man in jazz— •• the tiny particulates dusting •• my copy editor’s Duckie Brown wingtip shoes— •• a Lefaucheux revolver & a Rand McNally World Portrait desk-top globe •• i heard everything disappearing •• “i want to make mistakes & fall in love,” i whisper •• thinking of her pretty blue dress as it liberates the lust •• of many a wallflower •• one can speculate that his romantic hopes were unfulfilled •• as she tells him to slow down— •• it’s the serial crises of imagery •• envisioned as hand-to-hand combat w/ dinosaur fossils •• as i adjudicate the brass tacks of another dream— •• “O, the wine tasted like a marching band in the rain,” i thought •• as i had poured another glass of McManis Viognier •• everything i will have done is symbolized in the past-perfect future •• a paper full of treble •• it’s the matter my pop culture references will be forgotten in a couple of years •• i.e., Willa Cather w/ her Beats by Dr. Dre headphones